too many people having extra time

[IrmaFayLear]

I didn't quite know where to post this, so I've tried here...

Dd came home in some distress as it turns out that 15 out of 20 people in one of her A Level classes are having extra time for exams.

Dd is upset that it now seems that rather than levelling the playing field for people who genuinely need assistance, a minority are being penalised. Furthermore some of these extra-time people are in "competition" with dd in that they are highly ambitious A* people.

Dd said that one girl told her that "slow processing" is the new watchword and they paid for a private assessment. Dd said that this girl has no processing problems when it comes to quick-fire banter on social media and it's never been mentioned before.

If the exams are deemed too short, then surely give everyone 25% extra time? As it is with this particular subject, it's a case of some people being given 25% less time.

I had a quick google and a)there are masses of sites telling you how to get extra time and how to "fail" the tests and b) Ofqual has said that it is getting out of hand.

My child has extra time for ‘slow processing’. She isn’t ‘thick’ or lazy, or whatever other insults you want to throw at her. She is very sharp witted and comedic in social situations but has difficulties assimilating academic info and getting what she wants to say out of her head, onto the paper. This is not helped by complex MH issues. She has been assessed and meets the criteria, it levels the playing field and allows her a fair crack at her exams. I don’t feel guilty about it.

OP hasn't said what the subject is so we don't know whether the figure is statistically meaningful or not. We can only comment on the information in the OP. If 15 out of 20 students have adjusted time, the adjusted time is more common than the non-adjusted time.

To the PP who mentioned that those needing extra time due to slow processing being less bright. DS2's IQ was assessed as being in the top 2% but he was in the lowest centile for processing. It came to a head when he was 17 as his slow note taking was causing a hold up in class. He had got mainly A or A in GCSEs including A for English in the year when there was a lot of issues with GCSE English.
It came as a huge shock to his school when the level of his disability came to light as he had found at work round until that stage, when it started to unwind. He had 25% extra time at A2 and through University, and he needed it. ( His old school now assess the "bright but lazy" cohort differently now.)

to the lecturer who said it is easy to get extre time at university - just ask- I don't know where she works, but it certainly was not the case at Cambridge.

It's not the case where I work either (a post-92 university). You cannot 'just ask'; students have to follow the processes and have evidence of diagnosis. I would say though that it runs at about 10% off the top of my head, so far short of the level the OP is talking about.

Perhaps we should all be tested?! Reading this I've realised my processing is awfully slow when it comes to practical things: when I get there I'm there - more than there, even, but learning how to use equipment/machinery - I'm the proverbial tortoise.

OP hasn't said what the subject is so we don't know whether the figure is statistically meaningful or not.

Oh, come on. We really do. Unless this is a class of 20 who are all studying ancient Indo-Persian and therefore constitute virtually the entire cohort across the country? And somehow, I am willing to bet it's not that.

Springfan my DS has been the same as yours, we've just found out due to the struggle with note taking. He has been hiding his issues so far. It is only because all the teachers were moaning about how slow he was at taking notes and writing longer pieces of texts that we realised something was wrong. He is also in a very academic environment so is definitely bright and able, just very slow at getting the info down on paper.

If 15 out of 20 students have adjusted time, the adjusted time is more common than the non-adjusted time.

In that class only. In my A-level classes it’s nowhere near 75% or even 50%. What does that tell you?

Re: the "just asking", I think there's a difference between getting extra time (or scribe/reader) and having adjustments, which could include sitting separately. The latter can be suggested/awarded by the LSA dept for issues such as anxiety (or disruptive behaviour etc) but these people would not get extra time in the absence of evidence of other issues.

Having quickly looked - even a (very very very) minority subject like Latin has an intake of over 1000 students. You would need to have info on a far larger proportion of that total than 20, to have any sense of whether this was statistically significant, or just a random blip.

In addition, it is vanishingly unlikely that you're going to end up with a cohort of 20 students in a minority subject. A cohort of 20 suggests to me this is a fairly common subject, for which the numbers taking the A Level will be much, much higher and, correspondingly, you'd need a much, much larger sample again.

Unless this is a class of 20 who are all studying ancient Indo-Persian and therefore constitute virtually the entire cohort across the country? And somehow, I am willing to bet it's not that.

But what we don't know is whether the proportion of students with extra time is replicated in all, or a majority of cohorts in the UK. The OP is speaking about her daughter's cohort, in which a significant majority of students have adjusted time. If we assume this isn't an obscure subject, why do you suppose the OP's daughter's cohort wouldn't be representative?

why do you suppose the OP's daughter's cohort wouldn't be representative?

Duh, because 75% of kids don’t get extra time nationally.

But what we don't know is whether the proportion of students with extra time is replicated in all, or a majority of cohorts in the UK.

Yes. That is exactly my point.

If we assume this isn't an obscure subject, why do you suppose the OP's daughter's cohort wouldn't be representative?

Well, for one thing, because I know perfectly well that 75% of students don't get extra time! But leaving that aside and presuming we've uncovered fraud on a massive scale, there could be many reasons (some already given by @noblegiraffe upthread). The cohort could come from a lower-set group who include a higher proportion of students with SpLA. The school might have a reputation as being good with students with SpLD (my brother's school was like this; he was once in a class of 10 of whom 9 had diagnoses, and some of them were travelling well over an hour to get to school in the morning because their parents had been struggling to find anywhere where they could cope). Or, of course, it might be an entirely random coincidence.

We can't know, so we can't draw meaningful conclusions.

Duh, because 75% of kids don’t get extra time nationally.

Unless you know what the specific subject is, how can you state that with confidence?

Cross post.

Or, what she said.

Though, I will admit, this common sense response is poor logic and we'd be marked down for it.

It is a mainstream "writing" subject. The school does not particularly attract pupils with extra needs, and it is a "meh" comprehensive, but probably the best of what is on offer locally.

Because we're not idiots?

Seriously.

Sorry, cross post irma.

I do agree it's a bit weird and can see it'd be a bit dispiriting for your DD, but ... these things happen. Depressingly, if it were fraud, I don't know what you'd do about it! But it shouldn't affect her, should it?

You sometimes find that schools will put children with an spld all in a certain class because that teacher has a good reputation/knowledge of how to get the best out of those students.

Everything you're saying is based on hypothesis. You're trying to obscure the OP's point by inventing things. And putting 'seriously' at the end of your post does not add any extra weight to your arguments; rather, the reverse.

Unless you know what the specific subject is, how can you state that with confidence?

So you’re supposing that there is national fraud to obtain extra time to the fact that 75% of students achieve this, but that it is weirdly restricted to one subject only?

No.

So you’re supposing that there is national fraud to obtain extra time to the fact that 75%

I haven't mentioned fraud. It could simply mean that the standard time allowed for the exam isn't adequate for the majority of people who take it.

But that's not how extra time works?

You don't get a statement because someone has a crystal ball and can see into the future and know the exam was mis-timed.

this sample isn't statistically meaningful. It doesn't tell us anything about how many students in total have extra time, and it's a tiny, tiny proportion of all the students sitting the exam across the country. There could be perfectly innocent reasons why 15 of 20 students in this one class have extra time.
Statistics can define outliers in data sets. Alternatively subgroup analysis could investigate whether for example there is significant heterogeneity for extra time between for example SE schools with an affluent demographic versus the rest or between those achieving A /A star grades versus the rest. It is possible that the lack of change in percentage of extra time represents a decrease for some schools but an increase in a minority.

Certainly ‘outliers’ can be important to detect and investigate as is done for outlier hospitals for surgical mortality

Anyway OP, your DD will be graded according to national cohorts and therefore should n’t worry too much about being a minority for her class.

Everything you're saying is based on hypothesis.

Er, as opposed to what, exactly?